Doctors’ leaders have accused Steve Barclay of “bending the truth” after the health secretary exaggerated – for the second time – how much medics’ pensions are worth when they retire.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has received information from the NHS body that oversees staff pensions that disproves Barclay’s assertion – which he has often made during the ongoing doctors’ strikes – that consultants who retire at 65 receive a £78,000-a-year pension.
The health secretary said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday 19 September that: “The pensions that a consultant gets at aged 65 is subject to tax, but it is £78,000 a year.”
The BMA issued a furious rebuttal that day, which stated that the real figure – for the median value of a consultant’s pension at retirement – was “around £46,800”. They claimed that Barclay was “misleading the public about doctors’ pensions”.
However, the doctors’ union has since then received new information from NHS Business Services Authority under freedom of information laws. That shows that the median pension is in fact £41,756 – more than £5,000 lower than the £46,776.82 figure the agency first gave.
That is just over half the £78,000 figure quoted by Barclay.
NHS BSA explained its mistake to the BMA by saying: “It has come to our attention that the information provided on 18 August … was incorrect. An error was made when extracting the data that meant that revised benefits were incorrectly included in the total for each member.”
Dr Vishal Sharma, the chair of both the BMA’s consultants and pensions committees, said the new figures showed that Barclay had not been truthful in his repeated use of the £78,000 figure.
“These latest data demonstrate just how far from reality the figures that Mr Barclay continues to peddle are, showing the average consultant receives around half what he has claimed.”
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) continued to insist that Barclay’s statement was correct. But they explained that the £78,000 was in fact a projection for what a newly qualified consultant today would get as a pension when they retired at 65 – in about 30 years’ time.
They did not explain why the minister did not make that clear on Today last week. And they denied that his statement then that a doctor’s pension “is £78,000 a year” was different to a projection for a sum that may be earned several decades in the future and thus could mislead listeners.
Barclay’s £78,000 figure has also been quoted without explanation or challenge in reports on the doctors’ strikes by ITV, Sky News, the Daily Mail and PoliticsHome website.
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Sharma added: “He is repeatedly omitting the key detail that he is using what the DHSC itself refers to as an ‘upper limit’ – a hypothetical figure for 30 years’ time, based on completely unrealistic assumptions.
“While on other occasions he has specifically used the word ‘now’, thereby implying this is what consultants currently receive. This is bending the truth.”
He said: “It is frankly disingenuous for Mr Barclay to model future pensions with no pay erosion, whilst refusing to address consultants’ concerns that over the last 14 years of his government, consultants have suffered pay erosion of 35%. This is Mr Barclay having his cake and eating it.”
A DHSC spokesperson said: “The figures used by the health secretary are accurate and the figures used by the BMA are not directly comparable.
“A newly qualified consultant who retires in the future at 65, having worked full-time throughout their career, would expect to receive an inflation-proofed pension of around £78,000 per year. This comes after we recently announced generous reforms to the annual allowance for tax-free pension saving, following direct calls from the BMA.
“We are also giving consultants a 6% pay rise this year, on top of 4.5% last year, increasing their average NHS earnings to around £134,000 a year.”
Barclay was forced to admit that he had misrepresented doctors’ pensions once before. In a previous Today interview on 14 August he said consultants who retire “will get a tax-free pension of £73,000 a year”. But the DHSC later admitted that doctors’ pensions are subject to tax, like everyone else’s.
